Category Archives: Biodiversity

At the G7 environment ministers’ meeting in France this weekend, The Guardian reported that there was a call for a biodiversity study that is as influential as the Stern review on the economics of climate change. Yes, there is an “economic case” for understanding the value of biological diversity to mankind, and to the planet. But we expect much more from researchers and experts, from governments and corporations. CUJ is opposed to GMOs and the new genome editing technologies, that ignore and threaten the age-old development of species. We expect a full reversal of the free trade economic agreements that promote globalisation without a thought of its effect at the local level.

Small scale farmers need markets to reach consumers, and consumers need to know where their food is coming from. CUJ is calling for food and goods that are “locally made, locally consumed” and we continue to fight for biological diversity that is not subject to multinational corporations and WTO rules with patent provisions that make seed saving impossible.

At the G20 Japan 2019 Niigata, Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting on May 11 to 12, 2019, what policies will be discussed?

Quote: Humans form a part of biodiversity as well as a part of the natural environment. Rather than living in opposition to the natural environment, which can both deliver great bounty and at times pose great threats, we could live in harmony, which would enable us to make the most of the resources of nature. For instance, the city of Toyooka in Hyogo Prefecture has designated the stork as the symbol of its initiatives. Based on rice grown via “the stork friendly farming method”, the city has increased the income of farmers. This rice grown without relying on pesticides and chemical fertilizers is sold at a price 1.3 to 1.6 times that of conventionally-grown rice. Additionally, the city has employed ecotourism in initiatives on returning storks to the wild. Teaming up with local travel agents, the city has proposed “stork tourism” that combine viewing of storks and local scenic spots. Visitors to the city’s Museum of the Oriental White Stork, where one can get a close look at storks, have roughly tripled following release of the storks into the wild.

MAFF will hold another meeting as part of the G20 in Biwa on May 13-15, 2019.

But nobody from the active NGOs in Japan, with a long history of working on these issues since the 1960s, 1970s, are invited. Business as usual? Japan, you can do better.

This time, we consider large international meetings, and wonder if they are effective enough. There seems to be problems with making progress both in the areas of climate change and biological diversity.

We hope you will continue to stay updated with CUJ’s activities and news on our English website, and support our campaigns!

Consumers Union of Japan has been active in the debate about regulation of GMOs since the mid 1990 and firmly believe the new technologies, such as gene editing, must be strictly regulated. CUJ’s stance is that any such experiments should be stopped to avoid serious adverse effects on human health and the environment.

The expert committee proposed deregulation of organisms edited to remove or deactivate certain genes as opposed to adding new code, but critics are claiming this is “the same as genetic manipulation,” and that it is “strange” to exempt it from government restrictions.

“They (the committee) came to this conclusion after just two meetings. How can they say it’s safe?” said Consumers Union of Japan secretariat chief Michiyo Koketsu. “We need a debate that includes a wide range of experts, not just a small section of the research community.”

Research is already well underway in Japan on creating meatier red sea bream by disabling a gene that suppresses muscle growth. In cases like these — of disabling genes as opposed to replacing or recombining DNA — if the edited fish went to market without any report to the government, how could it be distinguished from organisms created through gene manipulation? Inspectors can identify organisms created through gene replacement by the DNA added to the plant’s or animal’s genome. However, in organisms with a disabled gene, it is impossible to tell if this was the result of deliberate editing or natural environmental factors.

Report from the 2018 GMO-Free Zone Movement Event Held in Nagoya, Japan

The 13th annual event to celebrate the Japanese GMO-Free Zone movement was held in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture, on March 3, 2018. During the past year, many groups participated in the preparation of the event, including members of the Seikatsu Club co-operative movement, local citizens and farmers groups in and around Nagoya, as well as the No! GMO Campaign.

Some 300 people joined this year’s event. We welcomed five participants from South Korea’s National Korean Anti-GMO Movement and two participants from Taiwan’s Anti-GMO School Lunch Movement. Starting From Seed to Otowa Rice, the research council that promotes the Otowa variety of rice, the Aichi Network to Promote Sustainable Organic Agriculture, and the nation-wide grass-root movement to test wild-growing GM canola reported about their respective activities in Japan. Also, the latest figures from Japan’s growing GMO-Free Zone movement were announced.

The area that is officially registered as GMO-Free has increased by 1,310.27 hectares to a total of 95, 526.27 hectares all over Japan as of February 1, 2018. That amounts to approx. 2% of the Japanese farmland. This may be regarded as small, but please recall that when we started this movement in March, 2006, we only had 4,716 hectares registered, so this is an increase of over 20 times. This time, we also included the official registration of pasture areas and forests as officially GMO-Free.

Supporter registration has also increased. “Supporters” are individuals and corporations that pledge their support to farmers who have declared their land to be GMO-Free. During the past year since 2017, the number of individual supporters increased by 2,505 to a total of 13,351, while the number of corporate supporters increased by 38 to a total of 84 companies and businesses.

We are working towards more GMO-Free Zones in every region of Japan, and the trend is that the areal is increasing year by year. We have also noticed that it tends to increase a lot in the area where our annual event is being held. This year, the event was held in central Japan, and many new registrations came from Aichi, Gifu, Mie, and Shizuoka prefectures. We believe this trend will continue from now on. The next annual GMO-Free Zone event in 2019 will be held in Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo.

In this issue we introduce our new campaign against genome-manipulated food, part of our strong resistance against GMOs in general. Field trials have started even though the government is slow to act to protect consumers or farmers. The debate about nuclear power is also high-lighted with Monju, the controversial fast-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture in the news.

We hope you will continue to stay updated with CUJ’s activities and news on our English website, and support our campaigns!

Contents:

From the Editors: Resistance and Resilience
Campaign Against Genome-manipulated Food
Press Release: Appeal for World Food Day
Food Security: Japan’s Self-sufficiency Rate for Sesame Seed Only 0.1%
Is the Consumer Agency in Fact the Industry Agency?
Pluto and Monju
News Flash: Monju Reactor Set for Decommissioning Lacks Sodium Removal Method

Please download the PDF file or read it here on our English website.

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Consumers Union of Japan (CUJ) is a politically and financially independent non-governmental organization (NGO). CUJ is funded by membership fees, sales of its publications and donations.
CUJ was founded in April 1969 as Japan's first nationwide grassroots consumer organization. CUJ was officially certified as a non-profit organization on May 1, 2006 by the Japanese NPO legislation.